


Hug All Ur Friends

by TheDeviantSentByJericho



Category: Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst, Ghosts, Happy Ending, Hurt/Comfort, I wrote this for class and now you all get to read it too, I'm Sorry, Kinda, Lennie Small Is A Ghost, Lennie-Centric, M/M, Pining, Yearning, does that make sense, i'm not proud of this, if anyone reads this, implied happy ending, really - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-15
Updated: 2021-01-15
Packaged: 2021-03-13 11:35:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,188
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28777632
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheDeviantSentByJericho/pseuds/TheDeviantSentByJericho
Summary: an epilogue to of mice and men, but make it low-key homoerotic. homoromantic?basically, lennie is dead.
Relationships: George Milton & Lennie Small, George Milton/Lennie Small
Comments: 2
Kudos: 12





	Hug All Ur Friends

The river carried his blood away.

Lennie hadn’t  _ wanted  _ to die. Honest, he didn’t! But he hadn’t wanted to kill Curley’s wife either, or the puppy, or any of the other fragile lives that had been crushed beneath his clumsy fingers. So when George had told him to turn away, when his voice had started to crack, when he’d gone on with tears pushing apart words like weeds between paving stones, he’d guessed what would happen, and he didn’t flinch. Didn’t try and run.

George was always right, after all. George cared about him. George would do what was right. 

Lennie trusted George.

Lennie didn’t know a lot of things, but he knew that Lennie trusted George.

So when he crumpled to the ground, pale, cloudy eyes open only to the dirt, he wasn’t scared. He trusted. He cared. Just like always.

Two tender leaves reached from the soil before his face. Green and fragile and full of life they were. If Lennie had been alive, he would have crushed them by accident, he knew. He knew a lot of things now, now that he was dead. 

The river carried his life away.

Beyond it, the place they would have had a farm waited, empty, abandoned of all the hope they had put into it. That was the hardest thing for Lennie to grasp, even dead. Not that he was dead, not that George had killed him, but that he wasn’t alive. That he wouldn’t get rabbits and patches of alfalfa and laughter and  _ home. _

Home was with George. Always had been, always would be. 

Was it a ghost, that waited by the river, watching the sprout grow? Was it a memory? Was it all that was left of Lennie? 

All he knew was that he had been Lennie, but Lennie was dead. Lennie didn’t get a happy ending. Was there any world where he had? Had there ever been a chance for him? For them?

The river carried his hope away.

Maybe things weren’t as lost as he’d thought, though, because George didn’t leave him. Well, he did, but he came back. He always came back.

Lennie didn’t have a place on the farm. He couldn’t. He was dead. But George built one, all the same, right across the river, and when he came by, when he talked to the little green bush that grew so slowly so close to where Lennie had fallen, when he let the tension fall from his shoulders and allowed himself to cry, it seemed almost like he was including him. Like they were together, in some form, some broken chorus of sorrow and love. And that made him happy, insomuch as a dead person could be happy. 

He didn’t know how much time it took, didn’t know how long it went between George’s visits. Time in between them was fuzzy and lost, blurry, composed of nothing but the shape of the leaves and the sound of the river, the sun and moon gold and bright. 

And then George would come, and talk about his day, talk about his life, talk about his loneliness, and Lennie would listen, voiceless, formless, mindless, nothing but a shadow of a man who had loved too much. If he had a face, he would have smiled. 

They were together, together forever, together despite everything, and that’s what mattered. More than Curley’s wife, or the rabbits, or even the farm. They were together.

  
  


The river carried his pain away.

  
  


George grew old as Lennie watched. How long? Who knew. He didn’t. But it was there, clear as the river, bright as the stars, a change like the seasons except that it never changed back. 

That was okay. Lennie didn’t mind.

George had his farm, and Lennie had his George, and a dysfunctional kind of contentment settled in. It was enough.

For his part, George had gotten used to Lennie being gone. When he came by the river, he’d talk about his life, his joys, not just his guilts. He brought a wife by, once, and then kids, who grew up playing by the riverside in their free time, eating the fruits from the bush that grew up over the spot Lennie had fallen, wild berries that were small and sweet and red. 

The farm grew bigger, and the kids did too. Lennie didn’t remember much of them, didn’t even know their names, but he knew he loved them. The family would have picnics sometimes, sitting down near the rivers, and Lennie would watch without eyes as they laughed, as George’s eyes would wander to the bushes and flowing river, filling with grief for a barest moment. 

Lennie wished he could ease that grief. 

It was okay though! Overall, George was happy, so Lennie was too. The visits got farther and farther apart, but they kept coming, and Lennie could wait. He couldn’t do anything  _ but  _ wait, really. But he didn’t mind.

The day the children left the house was the first day in a long, long time that George spent the night with Lennie, sleeping on the hard dirt, leaves and branches tangling in his greying beard. He looked so different. But he was still the same, still George, still his friend. 

The woman found him the next morning. Angry, she was so angry. It had been so long since Lennie had seen anger. It hurt, scared him. He wanted to act, wanted to protect, but he was dead. He was nothing. 

He didn’t need to though. George struck her, walked away, and it was okay. Right? 

She was crying. He didn’t like crying. But she’d made George sad, and anyway, he wasn’t even a ghost. He couldn’t do anything. He wouldn’t do anything. 

He resolved to wait for George to come again.

The river carried his rage away.

Seasons passed. Green and bright and orange and white and changing, always changing. And he was waiting, always waiting, except when George was there and they were together and they were happy.

They were happy. 

The visits started drifting apart again. It was okay though, until it wasn’t. They kept coming, until they stopped.

George kept waiting. Leaves fell, covering up his little plants. And he waited.

The children returned, adults now, but they didn’t visit. 

It was quiet.

Until one day, they came. 

The son. 

“Lennie?” He called, standing in front of the plants and glancing around, clearly uncomfortable. “Dad said, um, that he wanted us to find you? To tell you?”

He stepped forwards, the small bushes being crushed under his feet. They would never recover, and soon the whole patch would die, never to return. “He… He died. George died. Yesterday.”

What?

No, no nonononononono he  _ couldn’t _ !

He had.

“His last wish was to tell you, that he’s gone now, and he misses you, and if you’re still here, that there’s no use waiting anymore. He’s not coming back. I’m… I’m sorry.”

The man shrugged, self-conscious, and walked away.

George was gone?

George… was gone.

So Lennie would have to go and find him.

Nothingness embraced him again, and the river carried his soul away.


End file.
